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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22381597">Misery loves company...and pizza</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIcyQueen/pseuds/TheIcyQueen'>TheIcyQueen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan (Video Game), Until Dawn (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Attempt at Humor, Coping with trauma, Crossover, Friendship, Gallows Humor, Gen, Humor, LOTS OF SPOILERS, Non-Graphic Violence, Spoilers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:22:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22381597</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIcyQueen/pseuds/TheIcyQueen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the best thing you can do after going through a traumatic event is to find and talk with other people who've gone through something similar. Unfortunately, sometimes those people turn out to be Chris and Ash.</p><p>The MoM crew and the dorkiest members of the UD gang commiserate over the whole "almost dying horrible, unspeakable deaths" thing.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Misery loves company...and pizza</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was 100% just an excuse for me to (1) have these dorks interact, and (2) try and break into writing the Man of Medan crew/practicing their voices! If you've read any of my other UD stuff, you might've caught onto the fact that I am in love with the idea of Chris and Brad being bros - I just think they'd all have a lot to talk about, okay? Like. A lot. And I want to write about it all ;P</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hang on, hang on…”</p><p>Ever the wiseass, Chris let his knuckles hover a hair away from the door, his entire body going stock-still as though she’d hit some internal pause button.</p><p>“Rem—oh for the love of…could you take this seriously for one second?” Ashley reached up to urge his hand away from the door. “I just…before we let them know that we’re here, just like…could you remind me why we’re doing this? Please?”</p><p>His first instinct was to crack a joke. Mostly because his first instinct was <em>always</em> to crack a joke. One look at her face, though, and he relented, dropping his arms to his sides with a quiet sigh. “He called me. He was upset. <em>Real</em> upset. You <em>know</em> he doesn’t get that way unless shit’s legit.” He paused for just a second, “Oh snap, that rhymed! I should start doing slam poetry.”</p><p>She rolled her eyes and made a very conscious decision to ignore <em>that</em> comment. “Yeah,” she muttered, folding her arms and anxiously picking at the skin just below the cuffs of her sleeves. “I know he was upset…but why us, though? Why can’t they just…I don’t know…talk to someone—”</p><p>“Professional?” He raised his eyebrows when their eyes met. “Yeah, how well has that worked out for <em>us</em>, Ash?” The two of them leaned against the door, watching each other with varying degrees of…well, all sorts of unpleasant things: sadness, uncertainty, exhaustion, apprehension...it was a mix they’d spent the past few years referring to as The Blackwood Combo Platter.</p><p>Ashley scrubbed at her forehead with her hand, fingers stopping to cover her eyes for a beat. “I know. I know!” The admission seemed to take the wind out of her. “It’s just…it’s weird, Chris.”</p><p>“Sure is. But that’s <em>why</em> he called us! Cuz it’s weird! It’s fucking weird, and if there’s one thing we’re sort of pros at, it’s, well, the weird shit.”</p><p>“I wish you’d stop saying that like it’s a good thing.”</p><p>“Look.” He held his hands out to her, both palms-up, and simply waited until she begrudgingly took them, their fingers curling around each others’. “<em>They</em> are waywayway more freaked out than we are right now, okay?”</p><p>Huffing, Ashley nodded. Her mouth had taken on the squinchy, puckery shape that usually came before she forced herself through something unpleasant. “Yeah…”</p><p>“We’re just gonna go in there and talk—that’s it! Talk. We can talk, we talk all the time! Think about it: This is the <em>exact</em> shit we <em>wished</em> someone would’ve done for us when we got off the mountain—”</p><p>She rolled her head back on her neck, staring up towards the setting sun before leveling her gaze at him again. “I just don’t want them to think we’re crazy. Like <em>everyone else</em> does.”</p><p>“They’re not gonna think we’re crazy! They’re not, okay? They’re. Not.” He brought her hands up, but was left to make a disappointed little sound when she pulled them away before he could press his lips to her knuckles. “If they think we’re crazy, I’ll buy dinner, how about that?”</p><p>“Oooh, you sure know how to treat a lady.” Though she said it with her voice flat as could be, there was no mistaking the laughter in her tone. Before he could beat her to it (or she could think herself out of it), she knocked on the door, taking a deep, deep breath as she waited for the answer.</p><p>Hardly a second passed before the door swung inwards, causing them to blink in the bright light of the entryway. “Heyhey! You must be the college buddies.” The guy in the doorway was a blond-haired, blue-eyed dudebro with the slightest hint of five o’clock shadow and a grin that inexplicably managed to be both amused and wary all in one. This came as, uh, something of a shock to them, since—</p><p>“Well you’re not Brad.”</p><p>He held his hands up in surrender. “Got me there! Nothin’ escapes you guys, huh?” One of those hands was offered out to them, his grip solid in a way that immediately made Chris think of used car salesmen. “Conrad. Part of the Rogues Gallery involved in all this…” His grin wavered, but only in his eyes, “…<em>stuff</em>. Aw but hey, c’mon in, gang’s all here.” A moment later he was gone, heading back into the house. “Bradical! Your people are here!”</p><p>“Here we go…” Ash muttered under her breath, “Getting some serious ‘First day of school’ vibes.”</p><p>“Hi, I’m Chris, I’m majoring in comp sci, and a fun fact about me is one time I almost got eaten by a—” The rest of it escaped him in a whoosh as Ashley jabbed a finger into his side.</p><p>“Oh hey guys! Sorry, I was grabbing something from the kitchen…” Brad’s appearance was a much-needed breath of fresh air for both of them. There was a certain kind of relief that came with the realization that he was <em>just</em> as nervous as they were, if not <em>more</em> <em>so</em>; his eyes flicked from one to the other uncertainly from behind the uncharacteristically smudged lenses of his glasses, his smile tight-lipped. In a way, he looked like a little kid trying to keep a secret…and not doing a great job at it. “Hey, again, like, thanks for coming out and doing this, I know it’s, uh…unconventional? Is that the word?”</p><p>“It’s <em>a</em> word.”</p><p>Rolling her eyes, Ashley said, “Hi Brad,” by way of a response. “Don’t worry about it, we were just saying to each other that we’re sort of like, experts at unconventional situations at this point.”</p><p>“Still pretty shitty at the whole ‘socialization’ thing, though,” Chris pointed out, “So if <em>you</em> could handle all the introductions…”</p><p>Something about the proposition seemed to relax him, if only slightly; the tension in his shoulders dropped, the shape of his mouth rounded out, and all at once he was himself again. “I—come on, really? These guys are cool! I mean, okay, maybe they can be kind of…you know what, never mind. Whatever. C’mon, we’re still waiting on the pizza, but…”</p><p>It wasn’t their first time in the townhouse, not by a long shot, but it managed to feel strange, <em>alien</em>, as they followed Brad into the living room. They knew the room, of course…there’d been tons study sessions around that coffee table, not to mention D&amp;D games that stretched into the early morning, only tonight was different. Tonight, there were people already sitting in the spots they usually considered their own. People they didn’t know. People who were—okay, wow, definitely staring.</p><p>Great. Cool.</p><p>Neato.</p><p>“And so it begins…” Ashley whispered it through her smile like a half-rate ventriloquist and Chris squeezed her hand in acknowledgement.</p><p>The introductions went about as well as could be expected, Brad quickly going around the room in an orderly counterclockwise circle. “So, we’ve got my brother Alex.”</p><p>The (exceptionally dour looking) guy in Ash’s usual spot on the loveseat said “Hey,” but it somehow came out sounding more like ‘I absolutely don’t want to be here.’ He could join the fuckin’ club.</p><p>“His girlfriend Julia.”</p><p>From <em>Chris’s</em> usual spot on the loveseat, there was a wave. “Hi.”</p><p>“Her brot—oh, right, you already met Conrad.”</p><p>“Sup, Brad-lets?” He offered them a quick two-finger salute from his temple before making himself comfortable on the floor again, having apparently claimed most (if not all) of the throw pillows for himself.</p><p>“And then Fliss.”</p><p>A woman sitting at the window seat watched them carefully, making no attempt to hide the fact that she was sizing them up. “Hello…”</p><p>Brad turned back to them with a shrug, “And, uh, guys, this is Chris and his fiancée Ash. They’re, uh…?”</p><p>“We’re the people you call when weird shit goes down. Like the Ghostbusters, only no vacuums. Hi. Brad said you all had…” Chris paused just long enough to fix him with a quizzical look before heading for the couch. “Well actually…now that I’m thinking about it, you never really mentioned <em>what </em>happened, so…just gonna go ahead and assume you guys had a tough night, recently.”</p><p>There were scattered sounds at that—mumbling, mostly, though Ash swore she heard a scoff thrown in there for color. “We <em>also</em> had an…<em>eventful</em> night a while back. Like four ye—oh my God, it’s been four years.” She rocked back against the couch with the realization, social anxiety momentarily replaced by the sheer horror that came with the passage of time. “Wow. <em>Wow</em>.”</p><p>“Time flies when you’re repressing memories!”</p><p>The room fell into an uneasy silence, everyone pointedly avoiding looking directly at anyone else. It gave Ash the perfect cover to give Chris’s hand an I-told-you-so squeeze. This crap was all kinds of familiar. God, how many rooms just like this had they sat in since the quote-unquote Second Annual Blackwood Winter Getaway? How many cagey strangers had they shared their story with knowing full well both sides were cherry-picking which details to give and which to skim over?</p><p>However many it had been, there was always <em>someone</em> who took it upon themselves to keep the nervous stretches of quiet to a minimum, and tonight that role seemed to be Brad’s to play. “I just figured since everything’s been so…uh…”</p><p>“Tense?” Julia offered.</p><p>“Weird?” Ashley tried.</p><p>“Shitty?” Conrad chimed in.</p><p>“…yeah? Yeah. Since things have been…all that, that maybe it would help if we, like, had people to talk to who’d been through something like us before, and like…” He looked to the two of them from his section of the couch, eyebrows arched into high, plaintive slashes, “Okay, <em>fair</em>, you guys haven’t really told me <em>your</em> story before…but I know you’ve dealt with some bad stuff, so…” He gestured with his hands as though he’d only just discovered they were attached to his arms. “I-I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been having some, uh, <em>difficulties</em> readjusting to stuff, and…”</p><p>“Speak for yourself.”</p><p>Chris and Ashley exchanged a brief glance. Ooh yeah. They’d been here before. The whole conversation was like stepping into a time-warp. “It can be rough,” Ashley said with a shaky little smile, “There was definitely a lot of weirdness between us and our friends after what we went through, but I mean, talking about stuff helped.” <em>Made us feel like crazy people, too</em>, she thought (and kept) to herself.</p><p>The silence settled over them all again, twice as heavy and ten times as uncomfortable. This was always the trickiest part of it—who in their right mind wanted to be the first one to lay their cards on the table?</p><p>It would’ve been a <em>real</em> great time for the pizza to arrive…but no such luck.</p><p>“Uh…okay, how about an icebreaker, huh?” Conrad leaned forward from his nest of cushions with his hands on his knees, grinning a winning grin that couldn’t have more clearly been feigned—and in that instant, both Chris and Ashley were bowled over by a hundred million memories of Josh. Almost like he could read their minds, that grin faltered the moment his eyes fell on them…but then it was back in full-force. He rubbed his hands together, “Round Robin! What’s the most fucked up thing you did during <em>your</em> night?”</p><p>Silence.</p><p>Rookie mistake. He shouldn’t have expected anything else.</p><p>“…oookay, cool, cool…I guess I’ll start us up…” Clearing his throat, Conrad tapped his chin one, two, three times. Then, as though it had only just occurred to him, he cheerfully announced, “<em>I</em> almost jumped off a smoke stack! Very action movie hero, if you ask me…well, okay, minus the cool-ass explosions and <em>plus</em> the super real possibility of pancaking it.” The grin became a grimace. “So there’s that.”</p><p>The rest of them remained quiet, stonily so, their eyes carving nervous arcs around the room in hopes of someone else volunteering or…or maybe someone stomping their feet and leaving.</p><p>But they were more than used to <em>that</em> particular brand of discomfort. Ashley took a breath, feeling as if her lungs might burst. “I,” she said, forcing herself to smile despite the scream welling up in her chest, “Almost convinced a guy to shoot his ex in the head.”</p><p>Silence. Again.</p><p>Until quietly—<em>apprehensively</em>—Brad cleared his throat in much the same way Conrad had. “I, uh, hmm…” Suddenly aware of the scrutiny on him, he lowered his gaze. “I…wow, this is…ha…” he laughed, the sound unsteady and tense, “I watched a guy shoot <em>himself</em> in the head.”</p><p>“<em>Bro.</em>” That time it was Chris. He lurched forward on the couch, hand momentarily leaving Ash’s to drag at his own face. “The fuck?!”</p><p>“Yeah, uh…yeah. It was…pretty messed up, and—”</p><p>“No, I-I-I mean <em>yeah</em>, it’s <em>super</em> fucked, but <em>no</em>, what I…shit dude, I watched a guy get decapitated! Like <em>two feet</em> away from me!”</p><p>Brad straightened up in his seat again, momentarily forgetting his anxieties. “Wait, <em>what?</em>”</p><p>“Yeah!”</p><p>“You never—”</p><p>“Well there’s a <em>reason</em> we don’t talk about it, isn’t there?!”</p><p>“I mean, I <em>guess?</em>”</p><p>And just like that, for better or for worse, the feeling, the mood, the <em>air</em> of the room shifted. It gave way to something else—a frazzled sort of energy caught in the fuzzy spot between terror and excitement.</p><p>“I <em>jammed</em> a pair of those little nail clipper scissors into a guy’s neck,” Alex said, breaking his grim façade as he mimed an abrupt stabbing motion.</p><p>Ashley’s eyes widened. “I stabbed…” <em>Oof.</em> “…someone through the shoulder with crafting scissors.”</p><p>“Holy shit!”</p><p>“Um, I mean, I almost drowned—” Julia began, only for Conrad to start talking over her.</p><p>“Some asshole fucking cut my <em>ear off</em>.” He jerked a finger towards his right ear where, lo and behold, there <em>was</em> a considerable chunk missing from the shell of cartilage.</p><p>“<em>Jiminy Christmas!</em>” Ashley breathed, nearly falling off the couch as she saw it, “They sure did!”</p><p>Julia’s face quickly morphed from frustration to disbelief. “‘Jiminy Christmas?’” She repeated it and glanced to Brad as if to say, ‘Really? <em>This</em> is who you bring us?’</p><p>There was a soft noise (someone clucking their tongue, maybe), and then Fliss, too, chose to speak up. “Yeah, well…I kissed Conrad.”</p><p>He turned to her, hand still pointing towards his ear, brow furrowed until his forehead wrinkled. “Nonono, we’re talking about the <em>traumatic</em> shit that we—”</p><p>Fliss raised her eyebrows.</p><p>There was a beat where no one said anything, did anything, thought anything…and then it started. It was quiet at first, just a few nervous giggles behind hands, but when Conrad reacted (“Hey! Whoa! Ex<em>cuse</em> me?”) it was game over, man—everyone was down for the count. The laughter was <em>intense</em>. And <em>God</em>, that was good. Laughter was like the release valve on a pressure cooker, it was a vent that kept shit from exploding.</p><p>For the second time that night, the vibe of the room shifted into something lighter, something closer to a sleepover than an AA meeting, and that proved to be all it took.</p><p>“Welp, we’re the…what, guest speakers?” Chris chuckled, “So I guess we can…?” He met Ash’s eyes and she nodded, so he launched himself into their story. “Well…for ours I guess some context would probably help? We have this friend, Josh—”</p><p>“Had.” The corners of Ashley’s mouth twisted upwards into a sadly sympathetic little smile. She gave his hand another light squeeze.</p><p>“…had,” he agreed, voice going momentarily soft around the edges. “Yeah…yeah, sorry, it’s just uh…still weird. The whole…past tense thing. You’d think after four years…anyway, so we <em>had</em> this friend, Josh. And Josh had sisters. A bunch of us went up to their family’s ski lodge in the beginning of 2014, and, um…” Chris’s cheeks puffed out in a sigh. “Some stuff went down and—”</p><p>“A few of us played a really mean prank.” The color rose in Ashley’s face and she knew without having to ask any of them that it was immediately obvious ‘really mean’ was an oversimplification of things. “His sisters ran out into the woods. There was a really bad storm on the mountain that night, and they…well, they never came back.”</p><p>“Jesus <em>Christ</em>.”</p><p>“Yeah…not really…our proudest moment. But then a year passed and things were…” she pressed her lips together in a moment of thought, “Well, they were tense. Like, <em>really</em> tense. Between Josh and everyone else, I mean. Which <em>obviously</em> makes sense, right? We play this awful joke that gets his sisters killed…” As soon as it was out of her mouth she turned back to Chris, brow knit in a familiar expression of doubt. Could the others see her running the numbers in her head? She sure <em>felt</em> like the Math Lady meme as she sat there on the couch, that much was for <em>darn</em> sure, but did the others <em>see</em> that?</p><p>The problem was the word ‘killed.’ It had come out of her mouth easily enough, God knew she’d written it down on enough police reports and paperwork to cement it in her mind forever and ever amen, but it wasn’t…shit, it was <em>exactly</em> what had happened, now was it?</p><p>If she wasted another second pondering that particular chestnut, they really <em>were </em>going to realize she was being strange. Well. Comparatively. “Um…and then we all get these invitations to go back to the lodge for the anniversary of all that—”</p><p>“Hang on a sec.” Julia looked between the two of them with nothing short of incredulity. “I’m sorry, really I am, but are you <em>honestly</em> about to start this story off with ‘We went to a mountain in the middle of nowhere on the anniversary of accidentally killing our friends because we def thought their brother wanted to just chill with us?’” Her eyebrows were in distinct danger of disappearing into her hairline. “Is that what I’m hearing?”</p><p>“Julia.”</p><p>“Hey, JJ…”</p><p>“No, I’m just <em>asking</em>.” She deliberately kept watching them, dismissing Alex and Conrad with a brusque wave. “This guy’s already mad at you,” she continued, “He suddenly invites you back on the day his sisters died because of something <em>you</em> did, and what, none of you went ‘Hmmm, this is kind of suspicious?’”</p><p>It was a fair accusation. It was. When said aloud like that, put on the table in black and white statements short enough to be admissible in court, well yeah, sure it sounded off. It sounded like the beginning of a shitty horror movie—the sort with a budget of $10 that went entirely towards the rivers of fake blood they’d need for the final scene and nothing else. It was fair. But it was <em>also</em> something they were both exceedingly tired of having to defend themselves against.</p><p>“We were kids—” Ashley started, feeling the old heat seeping deep into her cheeks and neck and ears; <em>this</em> was what always happened. Always.</p><p>“Yeah. On the outside, it looks stupid as hell. It totally does.” Chris’s tone was stiff enough to be its own punctuation, but he shrugged anyway.</p><p>“You know,” everyone turned to Fliss as she raised her voice, speaking with all the ease and confidence of someone who was used to dealing with squabbles like these, “Considering <em>our</em> story begins with ‘We found what was essentially a treasure map in a <em>war grave we disturbed</em>…’”</p><p>“It was <em>one</em> bullet casing, we’ve been over this, oh my God…”</p><p>“I’m just saying, maybe <em>we</em> don’t get to judge.” She held Julia’s gaze for a long moment, cocking her head to the side and lifting her shoulders ever so slightly.</p><p>“Sorry, sorry…” Julia rolled her eyes and sank deeper into the loveseat, lifting a hand to block the others’ pointed stares. “I was just asking.”</p><p>Ashley tightened her mouth into what she thought <em>probably</em> looked like a smile. “It’s fine, really. Really! It’s just…the whole situation was complicated. I’m sure yours was too.”</p><p>Julia’s eyes flicked to Conrad. “‘Complicated’ is a word for it.”</p><p>Ominous. Fantastic! Why <em>wouldn’t</em> it be ominous?</p><p>“So anyway, we get up to the lodge and for a little while, stuff’s totally normal! We hang out, mess around with the fireplace, that kind of thing. Then, all of a sudden, everything got…”</p><p>“Weird?” Brad offered after a moment.</p><p>“Weird.” They agreed in unison.</p><p>Chris leaned forward as he took over, raking a hand through his hair before settling on the best way to go. “Turns out Josh, surprise, wasn’t all that happy with us.”</p><p>Julia didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to—the look on her face was pretty clear.</p><p>“He’d rigged the whole lodge with booby traps and cameras so he could film us freaking out…”</p><p>“Uh…his idea of revenge was going <em>Home Alone </em>on you?” Conrad asked. “Ooh, did anyone get smacked by a bowling ball on a string?”</p><p>“It was a lot less <em>Home Alone </em>and a lot more, uh…”</p><p>“<em>Saw.</em>” Shaking his head, Chris resisted the urge to shudder. “I—oh shit, have you guys seen <em>Blood Monastery?</em>” He sat upright as the thought occurred to him.</p><p>There was no describing the confusion on the others’ faces. “The…the horror movie about the nuns?”</p><p>“<em>Monks</em>.”</p><p>“Chris,” Ashley sighed. She dropped her head into her hands. “Really?”</p><p>“Well, Josh’s dad was the <em>director</em> of that movie. And like…a <em>lot</em> of the past few years’ horror movies. He had the tools to go all-out, is what I’m saying, and he, uh…did. He did.” When he sensed (or thought he sensed) that they didn’t believe him, he added the clincher, “He made a mannequin of himself, filled it with pig entrails, and then faked his own death by making us watch him get torn apart by industrial saws.” He shrugged, “It was a long night.”</p><p>Dead silence. Then, “<em>Dude</em>.”</p><p>“Look, we <em>told </em>you we’d been through some shit, man! But that’s only half the story. We figure out he’s fucking with us, we get mad, he does his mad scientist laugh, whatever, but then, get this…spooky old dude shows up, right? Straight out of a horror movie too: wearing a bandana over his face, covering just some <em>real</em> jacked-up chompers, big ol’ goggles covering his eyes, one of which, by the way, was totally fucked. Blind, huge scars around it like he’d been wrestling bears, the works—”</p><p>Before Chris could finish his thought, Conrad cut in. They were both coming to understand that was what Conrad <em>did</em>—interrupt. “Oh, weird.” He looked around to the others, frowning in a way that was hard to place. “One of our guys had a messed up eye, too.”</p><p>“Really?!” Chris’s voice cracked with what he hoped to <em>God</em> sounded like interest and not what it really was…irrational terror. Swallowing hard, he gave it another go. “I-I mean, really? What’re the chances? Was he, uh…” he laughed, but even if no one else recognized it, there was no question Ashley could hear the anxiety growing just behind the amusement. After what they’d been through, their night of supernatural horrors, it seemed horribly, gruesomely, disgustingly, unspeakably <em>possible</em> that somehow both of their groups had managed to run into the same (dead dead dead) stranger. “Was he carrying around a flamethrower, by any chance?”</p><p>Alex let out a curt snort. Well, at least <em>he</em> wasn’t cluing into the dread settling over them like a raincloud. That was <em>something</em>. “Nah. Bigass hammer.”</p><p>“However big you’re imagining it,” Brad added, “Double—no, <em>triple</em> it!”</p><p>For some reason, ridiculous and childish as it might’ve been, the absence of a flamethrower convinced them immediately that they were talking about two very different people. Did that make any kind of sense? No. Absolutely not. But then again, what part of <em>any </em>of this made sense? There was no <em>place</em> for sense in that room.</p><p>“Sheesh. Yeah, our guy was…” Ashley stopped almost as soon as she’d started; that sentence suddenly felt significantly harder to finish than she’d anticipated. He was what? The only person of interest in the twins going missing? A monster hunter? Dead, for sure, he was definitely dead.</p><p>“He was the guy whose head I saw get lopped off.” Chris masterfully managed to downplay the gravity of the statement. “He was <em>also</em> the only reason we lived through our night, so…”</p><p>“Yeah, Olson was a pirate.”</p><p>Which one of the others had said <em>that?</em> Neither of them would’ve been able to answer even if there’d been a gun to their head, and they knew that shit from <em>experience</em>.</p><p>“I…I’m sorry…” Chris pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and scrubbed at his eyes with his hands. “I’m gonna need a do-over on that one. Did you just fucking say <em>pirate?</em> He was a <em>pirate?</em>”</p><p>“Yeah, he—”</p><p>“<em>Pirate?!</em>”</p><p>“Man, I thought I told you that on the phone—we were kidnapped by pirates and—”</p><p>He threw his hands into the air. “Nononononono! Stop, <em>stop!</em> Done. Our story’s done. Yours now.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Spooky old guy showed up, then flesh-eating spirits showed up—”</p><p>“…um?” Julia turned her attention back to them. “<em>What</em> showed up?”</p><p>Chris soldiered on, eyes on the prize. “We ran away from said flesh-eating spirits, blew up the lodge with the flesh-eating spirits inside, boom! Done! Now, pirates?! <em>Pirates, though?!</em>”</p><p>Brad mimicked his posture, arms out to the sides. “Flesh-eating spirits?!”</p><p>“<em>PIRATES!</em>”</p><p>“Can we at least <em>circle back </em>to your thing?!”</p><p>Because the world was an imperfect place, it was at <em>that</em> moment that the pizza arrived. All seven of them jumped out of their skin at the sound of the doorbell…then promptly dissolved back into the same adrenaline-fueled laughter as before. What a group they made.</p><p>With a terribly unflattering grunt, Conrad got to his feet, waving Alex away before he could stand up. “I got this, I got this…you guys start the story without me. I know how it goes,” he joked, then disappeared out into the hall.</p><p>“Well, uh, Fliss already sort of started it…” Brad began. “On a dive, Alex and Julia found this <em>fantastic</em> wreck from World War II, and inside it there was this document with coordinates for something they only referred to as ‘Manchurian Gold.’”</p><p>Clearly enraptured already, Chris clapped his hands together twice. It was like he was a kid at the circus. “No way. No <em>way</em> you guys found an actual <em>treasure map</em>.”</p><p>“We sure <em>thought</em> we did,” Julia said bitterly, folding her arms across her chest. She’d been tracking Conrad with her eyes as he passed by, but once he was gone, she looked over to them again. “What we didn’t know was that while we were down there, my—” she raised her voice until she was very nearly shouting, “<em>—genius of a brother went and pissed off a bunch of pirates!</em>”</p><p>“I’m pretty sure they were just fishermen at that point.” Brad held his hands up in defense when she turned her glare his way. “I-I’m just saying, <em>technically</em> they hadn’t done anything illegal until—”</p><p>“Does it <em>matter?</em> Connie pissed them off, and that night while we were sleeping they stormed our boat, found the coordinates, and hijacked us. They took us out in the middle of this <em>huge</em> storm, we <em>all</em> could’ve drowned, and we end up at this huge…” she seemed to run out of words, baring her lower teeth in a wince as she snapped her fingers, “Someone help me here.”</p><p>“Freighter,” Fliss finished for her. “It was anchored out in the middle of the ocean, just…waiting.”</p><p>There was no restraining the shudder that worked its way up Ashley’s spine. “Eugh. Talk about creepy. Was there anyone on it?”</p><p>“A whole ton of dead guys!” Conrad appeared triumphantly in the doorway with three pizza boxes balanced in his arms. “Not exactly what I would call the most <em>ideal</em> of romantic getaways, but hey, we made it work, didn’t we, guys?”</p><p>“Shut <em>up</em>, Connie.”</p><p>“So wait, wait, hang on…you’re kidnapped by pirates…who take your treasure map…and follow it to a boat full of dead people?” Chris looked from Brad to Fliss to Julia to Alex to Conrad, scanning each of their faces in turn for any sign of deception. “Okay, this is where Ashton Kutcher jumps out and everyone laughs at us, right? This is the time? This is the moment of Punk’ening?”</p><p>Conrad didn’t wait to open the topmost box, grabbing a slice of pizza so greasy the light seemed to make it glimmer. “Don’t I wish. Nah, they load us up into the boat so they can go looking for their <em>Manchurian Gold</em>,” with his free hand he made a pair of air-quotes, “And wait to see if our parents are willing to kick in a few k’s for our safe return.” He snorted at that, taking a bite out of his slice. “Joke’s on them, I’m pretty sure Mom and Pop would’ve paid <em>them</em> to take us off their hands, huh JJ?”</p><p>Julia chose not to answer that, pulling her legs up onto the couch and frowning at him until he resumed his seat on the floor.</p><p>“Anyway,” Brad picked up where they left off, clearly more comfortable talking now that the ball was rolling, “We break out of the room they had us locked in and we start looking for this—oh, shoot, right, they took the distributor cap out of Fliss’s boat, which…” he waved his hands as if to say ‘never mind,’ “We just needed that part to get away from them, right? So we’re trying to find that and, of course, we get split up.”</p><p>“Of course.” After watching Alex and Julia go for the pizza, Ashley made her move as well, making sure to get a wad of napkins to soak up <em>some</em> of the grease. “We spent a lot of time split up from our group too,” she sighed, “It’s like…a requisite of having a Super Bad Night.”</p><p>“But that’s when things go from bad to worse, because now all of a sudden, in addition to all these awful corpses, we’re all <em>seeing things</em>. Like, uh…” Alex cleared his throat.</p><p>Quirking an eyebrow, Chris also made a go for the pizza. “Supernatural shit? Flesh-eating spirits shit?”</p><p>“Sort of? I, uh…well, I saw some...<em>stuff</em>.”</p><p>“I got chased by this <em>ancient</em> old broad.” Conrad seemed happy enough to offer up his own personal trauma, already tearing at the crust of his slice. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, age is just a number, you’re only as old as you feel, all that jazz…but hoo boy.”</p><p>“Eventually,” Fliss cut in, putting an abrupt end to wherever he was going with <em>that</em> spiel, “I found the Manchurian Gold everyone was so excited about.”<br/>
<br/>
Finishing what was in her mouth, Ashley dabbed at the corner of her lips with a napkin, watching Fliss thoughtfully. “Um…I would’ve thought finding treasure would be more exciting than how you’re making it sound.”</p><p>Her mouth tightened into a frustrated purse. “Mhm. The <em>treasure</em> they all wanted so badly? Turns out it was a chemical weapon used in the war. It was leaking into the boat, <em>had been</em> for the past, what, seventy years? It was all just <em>there</em>. I found all these documents with it that talked about how it caused heart palpitations, how dangerous it was.”</p><p>“We figured <em>that</em> must’ve been what killed everyone on board! And uh, why <em>we</em> were all seeing things.”</p><p>On the other side of the coffee table, Julia shivered.</p><p>“We ended up finding the distributor cap and escaping, I mean, uh, obviously…”</p><p>“And the pirates?” Chris asked.</p><p>Ashley felt herself sink deeper into the cushions of the couch. “You’re like a six-year-old, do you realize that? Holy crap, Chris.”</p><p>“Yeah, they uh…” Bobbling his head slightly, Conrad reached over for another slice. “Our captors weren’t quite so lucky. I think Brad mentioned the…” Instead of finishing the thought, he put a finger-gun to his head and clicked his tongue.</p><p>“Real nice, Connie. Real fucking nice.”</p><p>They knew better than to ask about the others—they’d long-since learned that when people let their stories trail off in certain places, there were perfectly good reasons for it. They, themselves, usually left out the part where Josh had been left behind in the mines. It was simpler that way. Usually.</p><p>“So…what did yours end up being?”</p><p>Chris and Ash exchanged a look before they turned to Conrad in eerie unison. “What do you mean?”</p><p>His free hand had been dangling between his knees, but then he flared his fingers, bringing his shoulders up into a shrug. “Well our creepshow was all thanks to Uncle Sam’s special hallucination juice. Tax dollars hard at work! But I have this funny feeling you guys and your friends weren’t huffing stale dubya-dubya-two farts all night like <em>we</em> were, sooo…” He held his palms up, clearly waiting. “Or are you about to tell us you <em>actually</em> got chased down by some <em>The Hills Have Eyes, Silence of the Lambs</em>, one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people-eaters?” He laughed as he said <em>that</em>, but neither of them found it in themselves to join in.</p><p>Chris had just enough time to eke out, “There wasn't—” before Ashley’s hand was back on his, her grip becoming a full-on vise.</p><p>“Carbon monoxide,” she said quickly…but not <em>so</em> quickly that anyone else seemed to notice. If <em>any</em> of the others might’ve caught on to the strange moment, it certainly would’ve been Brad, the only one among them who <em>knew</em> Chris and Ash to begin with. He sure wasn’t showing any sign of it, though, way too involved in getting himself something to eat. For his part, Chris had turned to her, brow furrowed, but she kept talking as though she hadn’t noticed. Really, she just didn’t want to give him any room to get a word in. <em>This</em> was the part she'd been dreading from the get-go...the part where, if they didn't play their cards just right, they'd be labeled 'the crazy ones' again. “There was a leak from the fireplace, apparently. It’s why the whole place…” With her other hand (the one <em>not</em> currently turning Chris’s into ground meat), she pantomimed an explosion. “We’d been breathing it in nonstop.” Or at least so said the police reports from that night.</p><p>Alex whistled a low note, folding a second slice of pizza over itself as he shook his head. “You guys are <em>super</em> lucky, then. That shit’s serious.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Chris said, stretching the syllable out until it grew thin. “Super lucky.”</p><p>The rest of the night passed surprisingly well—once they’d gotten over the initial discomfort of opening up, the others launched themselves into their own stories, talking about the horrific things they’d thought they’d seen on the ship, showing off injuries that would doubtlessly become scars, and commiserating about how godawful tetanus boosters were. It was late (<em>seriously late</em>) by the time everyone talked themselves out, adrenaline crashing into yawns and bleary eyes; there was no sign of life in the little neighborhood as they finished up their goodbyes and walked outside, promising to touch base soon, definitely, absolutely, real soon. They smiled and laughed and began heading for the car.</p><p>When they’d made it to the street, well out of earshot of any windows that might’ve been left open, Chris quietly asked, “…so…?”</p><p>A sigh. “Well, it went better than the one with the alien people, that’s for sure.”</p><p>“Pirates!” Chris threw his arms up into the air. Was that…<em>envy </em>in his voice? Yeah. Yeah, it sure was. “They got kidnapped by <em>pirates!</em> And what did we get?! Cannibalism! Concussions! I can’t eat meat anymore, Josh is <em>dead</em>, and they get…<em>pirates</em>!”</p><p>“And war crimes. Don’t forget the war crimes.”</p><p>“God…oh, Sam’s gonna flip her lid when she hears about this. Call her up, would you? Put her on speaker.”</p><p>She rolled her eyes but made no attempt to hide her smile (nor did she move to pull her phone out). “Really? We’re gonna bore her with <em>another</em> story of <em>another</em> crappy support group meeting?”</p><p>“Um, yes? There were pirates in this one, Ash, <em>pirates!</em>”</p><p>“Mhm. I know, Chris. I was there. Right next to you. Listening. The whole time.” She laughed, sliding her hand down his arm until it reached his, lacing their fingers. “And just saying? I think you missed the part where they explained the pirates in question were not the ‘yo-ho-ho’ kind.”</p><p>“I dunno, they sure sounded awful parrot-y to me. Like Jimmy Buffett levels of parrot-y.”</p><p>“You’re impossible, I hope you know that.”</p><p>He shook his head before throwing one last glance over his shoulder towards the house. “Pirate ransoms and bioweapons. Man oh man…some people have all the luck, huh?” His other hand moved to rummage in his pocket, “Well if <em>you’re</em> not gonna call Sam then <em>I</em> am. She’s gonna fucking <em>love</em> this…”</p>
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